Wednesday, June 25, 2104 Early this morning we had a thunderstorm move through around 3 AM with lightning and heavy rain. It moved away quickly and we went back to sleep. We made our usual preparations to leave and were happy that we had put away some things last night before the rains came this morning. It was a cool, sunny morning and should be a good travel day. We only have about 70 miles to go, so we didn’t need to hurry. We’ll be sorry to leave Beaver Lake Campground, Custer City, and the state park. Everyone was so nice. It’s been a blast! We pulled out of the campground around 10:00. As kids when we went camping with the family, Dad put us in charge of “policing the area” before we left so that we didn’t forget anything. I remember that to this day, Dad, and think about it each time we leave a campground. Some things just stick with you. We said “farewell” to the Black Hills.
Oh, and let’s not forget Crazy Horse himself!
We took Highway 16 back through the mountains and got to see this cool bridge.
We also got to see all those beautiful rock formations one last time as we descended into Rapid City.
From there, we caught the Interstate and drove 30 miles north to the Rush-No-More Campground, arriving at 11:45.
We set up camp and settled in. We’ll be here 2 days to check out the towns of Sturgis and Deadwood, SD. I got caught up on my blog since the Internet was much faster and stronger here with our campsite location.
We left around 2:00 to go into Sturgis and look around.
We did some souvenir shopping, but had to get our tourist picture taken first. Bob was on the hunt for Indian tacos for dinner tonight.
This group picture for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in 2013 became a mural on the side of this building.
There are some really interesting bars in town like One-Eyed Jacks and The Knuckle Saloon which took up 1/2 of a city block.
Easy Rider’s was really an eye-catcher with this big neon sign.
The Loud American Bar is advertised a lot and well-known for it’s loud, live music.
The name “Sturgis” sits embedded in the top of the hill above the city.
We walked around in town which had a lot of empty store fronts. The rest of the buildings were t-shirt shops and bars. But Sturgis would not be complete without a Harley Davidson Store…and it did. One of the store owners told us that the week before the rally on Aug. 4th this year, the place comes alive when people rent out the stores to ……you guessed it……sell t-shirts and souvenirs, and open tatoo parlors. It gets crazy with 400,000 people visiting during the week of Sturgis. We met this nice man and his 6 year old Great Dane, Willy, outside one of the stores. That dog looked more like a holstein cow.
We saw this unusually-shaped cloud on our way back and figured it was storming somewhere.
We took the short drive back to the campground and discovered that it had rained and hailed while we were gone. The hail was still laying in the grass. We had a few more showers throughout the afternoon so we timed our dinner during one of the shower intermissions. We had a severe thunderstorm watch for our area until 8:00, but we never had any really bad weather. Bob never found his Indian tacos in Sturgis, so we’ll check in Deadwood tomorrow when we head into town to do some sightseeing.
